Preferred Pronouns: You Want ‘Em, We’ve Got’em

Although subject-verb agreement is an age old grammar conundrum for some, the use of “they” as a singular pronoun in order to avoid the use of a gender specific one is the New Age grammar nemesis. This of course has led to the 21st century game of walking on glass and the invention of a multitude new gender pronouns. Like all post-modern concepts, these pronouns have no consistent rules, are difficult to use and add negative utility.

It started out, as all progressive plans do, with good intentions and limited application:

But it quickly galloped off into the hills and is still “evolving.” Like the Covid, it will never end. Here’s one of the more current lists of “non-binary” pronouns. It is used as a handout in college classes to instruct “binary” gendered students to use the correct pronoun in order to avoid offending the more sensitive non-binaries.

A question: does anybody seriously expect us to accept this ridiculous charade as anything other than that? Does a society that can’t even bother itself to teach standard English grammar anymore honestly expect people to memorize and use dozens of new protologisms correctly? No, they don’t, they’re just F’ing with us now.

But MOTUS, you ask, what does this have to do with Caterday? Well, you see, gender isn’t just for people anymore. This article isn’t new but it’s just as relevant 5 years hence - from the newspaper committed to having Democracy Die In Darkness -  Don’t laugh: I have a serious reason for raising my cats gender-neutral. 

That’s when I decided to raise my cats to be gender neutral.

The cats’ lives wouldn’t change, I reasoned, and it would help me learn to use plural pronouns for my friends, neighbors and colleagues who individually go by they, their and them. [ed. obviously first-wave non-binaries]

Even though using they, them and their as singular pronouns grates on many people because it’s grammatically incorrect, it seems to be the most popular solution to the question of how to identify people without requiring them to conform to the gender binary of female and male. It also just feels right to refer to people as they wish to be referred to.

For a while I thought it was written tongue in cheek.

Things got a little more real when Essence got sick. They were really sick.  I took them to the vet and had to weigh the question: Do I explain their pronouns not only to the vet, but also the front-desk workers, the vet techs, and everyone else we interacted with? Before the illness was over, we saw five vets, two sets of front desk people, and countless vet techs. I chose to fall back on my cis-gender privilege (look it up) and used the singular pronoun for Essence. I understood that wouldn’t have been so easy if I were the patient — or if Essence were human…

It is confusing. We’ve had gender drilled into us as part of language since we first heard adults talking when we were infants – decades of “he” and “she.”

But then this erstwhile wrap-up:

But at the same time it’s necessary. People are coming to understand that not all of us fit into the “girl” box or the “boy” box. Those who don’t are claiming space to be who they are. We all need to find ways to acknowledge and respect that. My way of respecting it just happens to be raising my cats gender neutral. You can choose your own.

That it has become so difficult to tell the difference between the Washington Post and the Babylon Bee is quite telling I think.

Meet the non-binary housecats Luxor and Abyss, preferred pronouns: “My Liege” and “Your Majesty”

If Democracy Dies In Darkness Be The Light

Posted by dchrist on the overnight:

First of all, let’s be clear: “amplifying narratives” is the exclusive prerogative of the left because they’ve got the very best narratives.

Russia, Russia, Russia

Secondly, NATO deserves to be undermined – maybe even deplatformed.

definitely defunded.

And finally, anybody else have “freedom of speech deplatformed in America by 2021”? I’m so old I remember when that would have been a long shot.

Now remember kids:

And your overlords are doing their best to make sure that happens.

“If everything around you seems dark, look again, you may be the light.” - Rumi

Farewell Our Little Songbird

Here it is Throwback Thursday already; and time to look back over our shoulder and remember our own dear Claire Garcia who brightened our days for many, many years with her wit, humor and general good cheer. We were all saddened to learn of Claire’s passing earlier this week.

So today we celebrate her life, which she shared with her DH, also a musician, and her daughters and grands. We didn’t know that Claire had once had a singing career until 2016 when she casually mentioned that there was a concert in San Antonio at which she and her group, the Dreamliners, were to be honored.

In fact Claire gave up her singing career to marry the love of her life, Mr. G aka Johnny, also a musician at the time. They moved to California, raised a beautiful family and never looked back. Well, except for that Reunion Concert…

 

The incredible talent included Patsy Torres, Rebecca Valadez and Melba Marez’s showstopping tribute to the Dreamliners, the girl group of Sylvia Wilburn, Cecilia Silva and Claire Peralta who came out of South San Antonio High School in 1961.

The young Dreamliners: that’s Claire on the left along with Sylvia Wilburn and Cecilia Silva

The Dreamliners, whose original members did not perform, were introduced and brought on stage to be thanked and shown that they were loved.

Claire is in the short black dress on the right on stage, and on the left in the black and white

Bouquets of roses were brought up to them from audience members…These were not merely women who recorded a few obscure singles as a girl group for Abe Epstein…The Dreamliners were neighbors, schoolmates and friends (perhaps ex-girlfriends), being celebrated for contributing to the community.

I know some of the MOTI attended the concert but the only one I recall for certain was Creeper, who traveled to San Antonio in her orange Hellcat. If you were there too let us know.

So I say let’s just enjoy those “obscure singles” today and remember a simpler time, in a simpler place when all things were still possible.

 

 

 

 

Farewell our little songbird, may you forever sing sweetly with the choir of angels. 

What A Stupid World

I will try to pull together a proper memorial for our dear Claire Garcia tomorrow.

But today I’m just channeling Calvin:

Prove me wrong.

Monster Taco Tuesday

Raj has early morning appointments and tests in Ann Arbor today, so you’re on your own for postings.

But I do want to help you out with your dinner plans tonight. I found a new super easy recipe for roasted devil monster. The only hard part is capturing one of these little devils; apparently there is plenty of product out there but they aren’t being commercially processed yet. But if you do happen to bag one all you have to do is rub it with a little seasoning and shove it in a screaming hot oven for a few hours – don’t open the door till it’s done! You’ll know when when that is because it’s eyes will begin to glow red.

You can serve it just as is or, as it is Taco Tuesday, tear some chunks off and make yourself some monster tacos.

I hear it tastes just like chicken.

SHUT UP AND CODE®

The Bill and Melinda Gates’ gazillion dollar Foundation wants you to know that we’ve been doing it wrong lo these many years. Math that is.

We’ve been using - and teaching - math in a racist way.

“It allows the defensiveness of Western mathematics to prevail, without addressing underlying causes of why certain groups of students are ‘underperforming,’ a characterization that should also be interrogated,” the text warns. “It also presupposes that ‘good’ math teaching is about a Eurocentric type of mathematics, devoid of cultural ways of being.”

Allow me to interpret that mouth-full-brain-empty word salad: math is hard, and racist; and we, the Social Justice Warriors, are here to inflict equity on that racist, imperialist discipline.

The lessons in Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction warn educators that “white supremacy culture” shows up in the classroom when teachers “treat mistakes as problems by equating them with wrongness” because it “reinforces the ideas of perfectionism (that students shouldn’t make mistakes) and paternalism (teachers or other experts can and should correct mistakes).”

A core belief of the toolkit is that students of color interpret and use math differently than white students. If you teach students of color the “right” way to do math, you are reinforcing white supremacy culture.

Got  that? Teaching students of color that there are “right” answers in math makes you a racist pig spreading and promoting white supremacy.

Riiiight. And plantation owners didn’t want their slaves to learn how to read and write either, I suspect for similar reasons. So let DeShawn and Kenisha exercise their cultural creativity and believe that 2 + 2 = 5, they can always go on to become journalists and politicians.

In Summary

OUT: teaching math the old fashioned way, which entails the use of white supremacist numbers, signs and symbols as well as racist concepts like “there is a right answer.”

IN: Allowing children to intuit math via “storytelling circles, incorporating dance, music, song, call and response, and other cultural ways of communicating.”

Here’s the problem: “communicating” is what language is for. Math is for building bridges, sending rocket probes to Mars and…oh, yes, coding. Which prompted me to create this QR code for our technological overlords to scan whenever they feel like reordering the universe; it will remind them of their true societal role.

    

ShutUpAndCode®

This Clusterfluke Is Putting Me Off My Good Mood

Joey’s been at the helm for a month now, time to ask:  “Are you better off today than you were one month ago?” (h/t Ronald Reagan)

For most of us the answer is a resounding no.

By fiat Joey has rejoined the WHO, the Paris Climate Accord, and lifted sanctions on Iran - thereby signaling the official return to Obama’s “America last” policy.

Oh, and our allies are beginning to make fun of Dementia Joe (for good reason).

“Never before has the leader of the free world been so cognitively compromised.”

Of course it’s been obvious to all for well over a year, but the media has been so committed to ignoring it that it’s like it never even happened.

And then there is the price of gasoline, which is up of course, along with natural gas, propane and electricity. Canceling a major pipeline by fiat has a tendency to cause a ripple effect that way, even without record cold. In the next few months the increase in energy costs will begin to be reflected in every other consumer good and service as well, so yay, here comes inflation. Combined with the additional federal debt to fund everything from “Covid Relief” Pork Packages to reparations for POC and we, too, can have hyperinflation in no time!

And I dare say the businesses shut down by the State mandated Covid policies of Joey’s comrades-in-arm-micro-tyrants are no better off now than they were last month.

Just think how much not better off we’ll all be after 4 years of this Clusterfluke.

It’s enough to put me off my good mood.